Wednesday, May 8, 2019

Does Modern Man Think Too Much?

Lucy (author:120)

Does civilization think about itself too much? Humans possesses self-reflexive consciousness and thus are aware of their own thinking, which is what supposedly differentiates them from animals—though the line between man and animal is becoming increasingly slim the more scientists delve into the nature of animal consciousness. At a certain point in history humans were probably closer to animals to extent that they didn’t give too much thought to what they were doing. The hunters and gatherers known as homo erectus might have been in more of a survival than meditative mode. Socrates famously stated, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” So by the time of the Greeks homo sapiens had evolved enough that they were totally willing and able to account for their conditions and then there is Descartes with his famous “cogito ergo sum,” which is the philosophical version of Hamlet’s famous question about being. Ontology is that branch of philosophy which deals with being and essence and Kant’s “deontology” deals with questions of ethics and morals. Ideology is a response to the awareness of being. If you are conscious of your self, the next question is how should you act. The anthropological find known as “Lucy,” a creature who lived 3.2 million years ago probably didn’t trouble over any of the inequities associated with her condition of being both a woman and hominid. In terms of mindfulness, mankind has come a long way. However, despite triggering, affirmative consent and a multitude of ideologies which attempt to harness or control human impulse, that little bit of larceny one detects in everybody may just be man's inner animal talking.

About Me

Francis Levy's debut novel, Erotomania: A Romance, was released in August 2008 by Two Dollar Radio.
His short stories, criticism, humor, and poetry have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Republic, The Village Voice, The East Hampton Star, The Quarterly, Penthouse, Architectural Digest, TV Guide, The Journal of Irreproducible Results, and other publications. One of his Voice humor pieces was anthologized in The Big Book of New American Humor (HarperCollins). He is presently the Co-Director of The Philoctetes Center for the Multidisciplinary Study of Imagination (philoctetes.org), where he supervises roundtable discussions on topics as varied as “The Psychology of the Modern Nation State” and “Modern Traffic Theory, Behavior, and Imagination”.